Epic Games Teases New Store Architecture and Community Spaces

Epic Games is planning to rebuild its storefront, add new community spaces, and other top-requested features to attract more PC gamers and game developers. It’s been seven years since the digital storefront launched on PC and Mac, but it still lacks many features users of Valve’s leading Steam platform take for granted, such as user reviews and built-in mod support.

“This year, we’re focused on delivering long-requested features and deeper platform improvements,” the company said today. “We’re in the process of rebuilding the underlying architecture of the Epic Games Store Launcher and plan to ship improvements this summer. These changes will make the storefront on the launcher responsive and feel good to use, with fast load times and greater stability.”

This fall, the Epic Games Store on PC and mobile will get a cross-platform library, and users will also get regional storefronts with localized discovery. The mobile store will also launch in March in Japan, with Brazil to follow in June.

On the social front, the Epic Games Store is planning to launch “community spaces”, which sounds like something Steam already has. The app’s messaging component will also add support for avatars, player profiles, and “private messaging,” though it’s not immediately clear what this means. Support for voice chats and game-independent parties is also coming in Q2 2026.

Epic Games keeps trying to attract more developers by allowing them to keep 100% of their first $1 million in annual net revenue per product, per year, before Epic’s standard 12% cut applies. Developers are also free to use their own payment systems for in-game purchases and keep 100% of the revenue from these transactions.

There are now 6,000 games on the Epic Games Store, and PC players spent $1.16 billion on the digital storefront last year (up 6% year over year). This year, Epic Games plans to leverage its massively popular Fortnite IP to help developers sell more games. A new program will allow gamers who purchase games from Capcom and other participating developers to get a Fortnite skin and matching character avatar for their Epic account profile.

Even though Epic announced that it now has over 317 million total PC players, its number of monthly active users was down 1% to 67 million players in 2025. Total gameplay hours were also down 14% YoY to 6.65 billion hours. PC Players claimed 662 million titles last year through the platform’s free games program, but this may not be enough to really drive engagement on the platform.